Seeking unity in diversity

Race relations have been a topic of conversation in Birmingham for decades, but in the last couple of years, they have rocked the city of Hoover as well.

Accusations that Hoover police target minorities swirled around the fatal police shooting of a black man with a gun at the Riverchase Galleria in November 2018, and a video of Hoover teenagers making racist and anti-Semitic comments also got national attention in March.

Those incidents, combined with other incidents of teachers and students using racially charged language, have led Hoover residents to do some soul searching. Efforts are underway on several fronts to address racism and the perception of it.

After the fatal shooting at the Galleria led to heated online conversations about race, a group of Hoover residents from different racial and cultural backgrounds started meeting together in January to figure out what to do.

“We were all trying to grapple with what this meant for Hoover,” said Damian Gilbert, who is serving as spokesman for the group.

Instead of letting race tear the city apart, they want to take back the conversation, examine the issues and look for solutions to any problems they find, Gilbert said.

The group — called Hoover-AHEAD (Ambassadors for Hoover Equity and Diversity) — went public with its effort at Celebrate Hoover Day on April 27, announcing that its mission is to celebrate diversity and promote equity and inclusion.

At the same time, officials with the city of Hoover say they have been busy trying to make city government more inclusive and help people from all backgrounds know they are welcome in the city.

Hoover school officials also have multiple efforts underway to examine the racial climate in the school system and eradicate any vestiges of the segregated schools that existed in Jefferson County decades ago.

School leaders are working toward being released from a decades-old desegregation court ruling, but first they must prove to a federal judge that black students are receiving equitable treatment and an equitable education.

Faculty and student groups at individual schools also are leading initiatives to bring unity.

Hoover-AHEAD

The Hoover-AHEAD group began as about 20 people from different communities across the city. It includes people from several different races and ethnicities, Gilbert said.

What they all have in common is that they love Hoover and want the community to be better, he said. Conversations about racial issues are critical, he said, but after the shooting at the Galleria, people were certainly talking about those issues, though often not with people from other races.

This group has been getting together at least once a month since January, meeting at the YMCA in western Hoover.

The first question that Hoover-AHEAD wanted to address was whether there is indeed a problem with racism in Hoover. 

“That question came with varying answers,” Gilbert said. “There are some people that think there’s a problem, and there are some that don’t.”

He personally thinks Hoover is a welcoming city when it comes to people from different races. He moved to the Birmingham area from California and, once he got here, moved from Fultondale to Hoover seven years ago because of the cultural and socioeconomic diversity in the city. It reminded him of where he grew up in northern California.

“I wanted my children to have that same experience,” he said.

But he also doesn’t want to sugarcoat the racial issue in Hoover, he said. “That’s just my experience. … There are people I know personally who don’t have that same feeling I have.”

Wonlia Blain, a mother of three children in Hoover schools who moved here from Houston in 2013, said during a public meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice and NAACP Legal Defense Fund in March that her children have had to deal with racial slurs every year they have been here. “It has been very traumatizing for my child,” she said.

One of her children has attention deficit disorder and was constantly pulled out of class in school, while white students who did the same things were not pulled out of class, she said.

Loni Curtis, who moved to Hoover from California in 2013, said the environment here when it comes to race is “crazy weird to me.”

The recent racist video could have caused a riot, she said.

“We can’t go into individuals’ homes and see how people are speaking, but we’ve got to do better as parents,” Curtis said. “We’ve got to do better as a community. … This is ridiculous.”

Gilbert said it’s important that everyone be included in the conversation.

He said there is no debating there is a perception that Hoover doesn’t appreciate diversity, and the Hoover-AHEAD group wants to erase that perception. They’re trying to involve more people and stimulate conversations about inclusion and diversity.

The group is conducting a survey, asking Hoover residents if they have experienced discrimination, exclusion or bias based on race, age, ethnicity, religion, nationality or perceived socioeconomic status. The survey also asks whether people have witnessed insulting remarks or hate speech and whether city, school and law enforcement officials are adequately addressing issues of diversity and inclusion. The survey can be accessed through the group’s Facebook page.

Hoover-AHEAD is also asking people to sign a pledge to refrain from negative, intolerant and insensitive language and behavior, and to be open to educating themselves on ethnic and racial diversity, equity and inclusion and sharing what they learn with others.

Sara McDaniel, who grew up in Indiana and came to Alabama through Atlanta, said she and her husband chose to live in Hoover because it’s the most diverse city around.

She got involved with Hoover-AHEAD because she saw a need to respond to the Galleria shooting and things happening in the schools, she said. She wants to do her part to find solutions to problems and to identify systemic barriers to equality, she said.

People are going to have to work harder to inundate one another with kindness, she said.

Kristin Powell, who lives in Lake Cyrus and serves on the school system’s Parent Diversity Committee, said Hoover residents can’t expect city and school officials to do all the legwork to improve race relations. People need to intentionally open their doors to people of different races so they can better understand each other’s experiences, she said.

“I think that’s where lots of change starts to happen,” she said.

McDaniel said Hoover-AHEAD is looking for simple things the group can do to foster discussion and understanding. Some ideas include coffee and conversation events at mom-and-pop Hoover coffee shops and book studies at the Hoover Public Library.

For more information about the group, go to Hoover-AHEAD.com.

City government

When Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato came into office in 2016, his focus was on supporting the Hoover school system, developing a comprehensive master plan and diversifying the city’s economy.

He said he thought at the time that race relations were good in Hoover. For instance, he would see children of different races and backgrounds playing together when he went to the ballpark to watch his grandchildren play sports. He said he would visit schools and see kids of all nationalities hugging teachers that didn’t look like them.

He was thrilled with how everyone got along, he said. He loves the diversity in Hoover and believes that’s one of the reasons many people move here, he said.

But then in November, “suddenly I’m thrust into a conversation about race, and that’s very uncomfortable and very difficult,” the mayor said during a live Facebook discussion on race relations in March. “It’s a tough position to be put in overnight to talk about one of the most difficult subjects in our country.”

The Thanksgiving night shooting at the Galleria did not have anything to do with race, Brocato said more recently. “It was a police incident, but a lot of people have tried to make it a race incident,” he said.

Ever since, he has been working to address the topic. Brocato said he and City Administrator Allan Rice have made themselves available to anyone that wanted to talk to help the city better understand race relations, not only in Hoover but over the whole metro area. He even had a phone call with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who came to Birmingham in December to speak at the funeral of Emantic “E.J.” Bradford Jr., the 21-year-old Hueytown man shot and killed by a Hoover police officer at the Galleria. The attorney general’s office ruled the shooting as justified.

Brocato said the Hoover Police Department faced a lot of false accusations after the Galleria shooting, but “our Police Department does not have a history of racism or targeting minorities,” he said. “There were no rampant complaints that I could find.”

If there had been, the U.S. Department of Justice would have come in to investigate, he said.

Nevertheless, city officials are putting the Police Department through an accreditation process, bringing reviewers from all over the country to examine the department’s policies and practices. That will include policies for active shooter situations and traffic stops, the mayor said.

The group that will do the evaluation, The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, is a joint effort of four major groups of law enforcement executives, including the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

“It’s the gold standard of evaluating your police department in the United States,” Rice said.

This is something the city was planning to do even before the Galleria shooting, he and police Chief Nick Derzis said. The Fire Department is going through a similar accreditation process.

Hiring and board appointments

Other efforts are underway to make Hoover a more inclusive city government, Brocato said.

When he came into office, he noticed that the city’s workforce was not as diverse as the city as a whole, so his administration has tried to be more intentional about diversification, he said.

Since October 2016, the percentage of city employees who are non-white has risen from 10.5 percent to 12.5, according to information provided by Rice. With about 800 employees, that’s roughly 20 more minority employees in city government.

The percentage of police employees who are minorities has risen from 13.5 percent to 15, while the percentage of Fire Department minority employees has increased from 4 percent to 5, Rice said.

While those may be small percentage increases, Rice said it takes time to make changes like that because people who work for the city of Hoover tend to stay a long time, so hiring opportunities are fewer.

Plus, during Brocato’s second year, nearly 50 vacant positions were left unfilled due to budget challenges, he said.

Brocato emphasized that his No. 1 goal is to get the most qualified person for the job.

“I’m not trying to reach a quota of any sort. What I’m trying to do is to get a diverse, qualified workforce,” he said.

The city has been able to accomplish that by making sure that people from a wide variety of backgrounds receive notice about job openings, he said.

Also, he and the City Council both have been more intentional about appointing minority members to city boards. The city’s zoning board and Library Board both gained their first black members under the current group of elected officials, and the council has appointed minorities to the school board and Industrial Development Board.

Hoover also has started a supplier diversity program to give more businesses owned by minorities and women an opportunity to do business with the city. It’s similar to programs that major corporations have had for decades.

Brocato said he is mayor to everybody, “and I want to make sure everybody knows that.”

He still believes that Hoover is a very inclusive city with people who work live and play well together for the most part. However, he also knows that, like most places, “we’re not perfect.”

While he found many people of color who have no problems with the city and think the police do a wonderful job, there are some who feel they aren’t treated fairly by police. 

“They may drive into a neighborhood and be looked at differently,” he said. “We need to listen to those kinds of things.”

He believes the accreditation process will help identify problem areas, he said.

Caring community

Derrick Murphy, who was Hoover’s first black school board member and is now the city’s first black councilman, said he’s proud of Hoover and believes it’s a welcoming city. If it weren’t, it would not continue to grow and draw more minorities, he said. “They move here because it’s welcoming.”

There are always going to be certain people who make ignorant statements and have racist or sexist ideologies, but overall, Murphy said, Hoover is doing a great job of offering a high quality of life for all people.

He pointed to groups like Hoover Helps, which provides food for hungry children, and Neighborhood Bridges, which connects people who need clothes, food or household goods with people who can meet those needs.

“When we see a need, we address it,” he said.

Anytime you’re dealing with human beings, there are going to be challenges that arise and mistakes that are made, Murphy said. That’s when you have to address the wrong and try to do better each and every day, he said. 

“When people do make mistakes, I believe you have to have a road to redemption,” he said.

He’s proud to see groups like Hoover-AHEAD and student groups working to educate people about racial differences, he said.

“I think we’re going to continue to have more and more citizens step up to the plate to continue to make Hoover a great place to live,” Murphy said.

Murphy in March organized a panel discussion about race and broadcast it live on Facebook and said he plans to do more of that in the future. Hoover is diverse enough that people can naturally build intercultural relationships through churches, the arts and sports teams, he said. “These are the things that are going to make us go from good to great.”

Response to racist video

When a video of Hoover and Spain Park high school students making racist statements went viral online in March, it rekindled the debate about race.

One student in the video said that without the Holocaust, Jews would be running the world. Another used a racial slur to describe black people and said they should be put in concentration camps.

The video caused so much uproar that school officials have been considering a change in the code of conduct, making it a class 3 offense to engage in racist or sexist conduct or language, whether it occurs on campus, off campus or online. Some parents say that’s going too far.

Ciarra Ingram, who just finished her junior year at Hoover High, said the video surprised and hurt her greatly and had an impact on the student body as a whole.

People began to wonder about other students they thought were their friends and wonder if they talked like that behind closed doors, too, she said. Students were angry and began to segregate themselves a little more by race or ethnicity, she said.

But the opinions expressed in the video didn’t match Ingram’s experiences since she arrived in Hoover from Atlanta in the sixth grade.

She came from a mostly black school, so it was different being in the minority, but “I felt very welcomed,” she said. “No one has ever come up to me and said something out of line or under racial circumstances or something that offended me like the video has,” she said.

She has always felt that Hoover High is a very diverse school and that people get along pretty well, she said.

“It was nice to be around people that are different from you,” she said. “I feel like this school has definitely increased my knowledge on different cultures. You have to be willing to learn about people instead of just making opinions about them.”

She’s glad she’s getting to experience this diversity in high school before she enters the “real world,” she said. 

“Everybody is not given the chance to be around so many different people. That was a huge opportunity. I’m grateful to be in Hoover — really grateful,” Ingram said.

Sammy Anabtawi, a 2019 Hoover High graduate whose parents are from the Middle East, said while he was surprised to see the particular students in the video making those kinds of comments, he was not surprised that some people felt that way.

He can remember being in elementary school when Barack Obama was president and hearing fellow students say they didn’t like having him as president because he is black. “I really didn’t understand that,” Anabtawi said.

The tension between races has always been there, but it’s just not always on the surface level, he said. Having the video to view over and over made it much more personal, he said.

Restoring unity in schools

Anabtawi and Ingram both were part of the new Student Diversity Council at Hoover High, and that group decided to hold a Unity Walk at school to help repair the damage the video did.

There were about 2,000 students on campus at the time of the walk, and about 1,500 of them participated in the Unity Walk and signed a pledge to respect the diversity of all people, said Lisa Carey, a faculty sponsor of the Student Diversity Council.

After a short walk around the parking lot, students returned to the school courtyard, where campus groups had tables set up with games and activities to help their fellow students learn about different cultures. The Spanish club had an online game with questions related to Spanish-speaking countries, and a group of Middle Eastern students showed people how their names would look written in Arabic and Urdu.

Ingram said she believes the Unity Walk helped rebuild trust between friends and heal wounds.

Students are realizing the importance of being unified and ending racism, she said.

“You can’t end racism with one person, but if we all work together, you can definitely create a strong impact, not only within your community, but in the world as well,” she said.

Ingram and Anabtawi said the Unity Walk is just another step in the process. The Student Diversity Council has held other events, such as recognizing National Hijab Day, letting people try on hijabs and sample foods from Middle Eastern cultures where hijabs are commonly worn.

Ingram is president of Club Awaken, an empowerment group for young African-American females. For the past two years, that club has held an “Ask a Black Girl” event, where students were invited to ask any question they had about black culture. There were a lot of questions about hair braiding, hair products and hair texture, Ingram said. In the process, she learned a lot about white girls’ hair, she said.

More events like those are planned to help foster cultural understanding, Ingram said.

Carey said she couldn’t be more proud of the Student Diversity Council. 

“They have cut a path where a path didn’t exist, but I want more, and I think they do, too,” she said. “I would like to see the Student Diversity Council put themselves out of a job, to educate and celebrate to the point that we’re no longer needed.”

She is seeking grant money to help pay for another Unity Day and would like to bring in a group that does poverty and homeless simulations. 

Hoover has some homeless students, and 25 percent of the school district’s students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

“It’s that diversity at Hoover High School that makes us Hoover High School,” Carey said. “Understanding that diversity is what will eventually unite us.”

Desegregation court order

Meanwhile, the Hoover school district has continued to work with the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys for black families in Hoover to develop an action plan to ensure that all students are treated fairly, regardless of race or ethnicity, Superintendent Kathy Murphy said.

“Our school district is very committed to making certain that we get this right,” she said. “It’s about every child, every student, being given every opportunity. That’s an opportunity to be respected and loved and cared for, opportunities for learning and achievement and success. Those are all of the things we want for all of our children.”

From time to time, school officials may get things wrong or hit a bump in the road, but “under no circumstances does this school district stand for any level of racism or bigotry,” Kathy Murphy said. “We are here to support all children, and all means all.”

The school system plans to hire more minority teachers and revamp its gifted education program and higher-level course offerings to encourage more minority participation, school board attorney Whit Colvin said.

Data shows Hoover schools lag in terms of minority representation among faculty, Colvin said. While more than 24 percent of students in the 2018-19 school year were black, only 9.6 of the teaching staff were black, Colvin said. But that is up from 7.5 percent in November 2017, said Natane Singleton, an attorney for the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

Hoover schools are pretty diverse at the administrator level and are working to improve percentages at the teacher level, said Terry Lamar, the system’s director of equity and educational initiatives. They have made sure their school-level hiring committees are diverse but likely won’t know until school starts how the numbers turn out for 2019-20, he said. They are not hiring solely based on race; they want the best teachers available, he said.

The school system has changed the way it identifies students for gifted education to make it less subjective, removing the requirement of a teacher recommendation and relying more on each student’s IQ, Lamar said. The district also is working harder to make sure parents know if their children are eligible and is surveying parents to find out if their children were encouraged or discouraged from participating in the gifted program and advanced classes, he said.

Hoover schools have racial disparities in discipline and will be looking for ways to reduce exclusionary disciplinary practices, said Peter Beauchamp, another attorney with the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

Lamar said administrators have been digging deeper into the discipline data to find out what they really show because sometimes numbers can be misleading. They also are comparing data from the most recent year to the previous year to see if positive behavior intervention practices put into effect this school year have made an impact, he said.

Hoover teachers received training about how to prevent and respond to challenging behavior by teaching a common set of expectations, acknowledging students who demonstrate the expected positive behaviors and helping students understand consequences of not meeting expectations.

School officials also held focus group meetings with students from Hoover and Spain Park high schools this spring to get their feedback about equity issues, such as opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities.

A diverse parent equity committee also has met several times, and he plans to have a parent focus group meeting in July or near the beginning of the year, he said.

The district in early June held training for administrators about how to properly discuss racial issues, and all teachers will go through diversity training just before school begins this year, using feedback they received from student focus groups as a guide, Lamar said.

Officials also are encouraging teachers to have a diverse range of literature to better connect with students from different cultures.

“I feel really good about where we are and the direction we’re moving towards in Hoover,” Lamar said.

Making Hoover home

Rice said city officials have learned a lot over the last seven months, such as how inclusiveness and equity are different than diversity. “Those two things are harder concepts,” he said.

Inclusiveness asks if everyone has a voice, and equity asks if every voice is equal in its power, he said.

Brocato said people of color who are his friends have helped him understand better that they may face challenges that he may never face as a white man.

Still, “I think that we have a welcoming, loving, embracing community of all different races and socioeconomic positions, and we’re going to continue to do everything we can to make everyone feel and believe thatHoover is home.”